Koll on a Roll

Iowa State's standout has a breakthrough season

Koll may not have liked the message, but she listened. No more staying up late talking to friends on the phone. No more missing morning runs. That summer, she followed the training plan Ihmels wrote for the men's team. "If you don't live the lifestyle 24 hours a day, seven days a week," she says, "you're not doing all you can."

The records didn't come immediately. Koll had a solid cross country season last fall (18th at NCAAs) and an even better indoor season (second in the NCAA 5,000m). Then came Stanford. In only her second 10,000m race, she tucked in behind soon-to-be-Olympian Magdalena Lewy Boulet. Every lap, Ihmels yelled, "You're good," and every lap, she wondered how long it could feel so easy. With 2 miles left, she looked over at Ihmels and decided to make a move.

With two laps to go, Koll heard the meet announcer say that she was on pace to break the American collegiate record. Wow, she thought. Neither she nor Ihmels had known that the record was 32:18, set in 2004 by Alicia Shay. Koll surged past Blake Russell (who, like Lewy Boulet, would make the U.S. marathon team two weeks later in Boston) into the lead and won by more than 3 seconds. Her second half – 15:52 – matched her best indoor 5,000.

A few weeks later at NCAAs, held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she proved Stanford wasn't a fluke. Just 90 miles from her hometown, on a track where she never won a race in high school, she ran 32:44 and lapped most of the field. "It was the best day of my life," she says. "I couldn't wipe the smile off my face the last three laps."

How did Koll rise from obscurity to stardom? By logging month after month of hard training, testing her limits last summer by running 90 miles a week. And by doing tons of strength work: 6-mile tempo runs and 1,000m repeats (at about 3:10 each) with minimal rest (75-second jog). "The runners who are really successful at a high level are the guys and gals who can really be consistent over time," says Ihmels. "That's Lisa Koll. She hasn't had any interruptions to her training."

Couple that with her competitiveness. "Her talent is her toughness and grittiness and not being afraid to lay it on the line," says Ihmels. Uhl, her boyfriend, agrees: "She works harder than anyone I know, by far." Says Grace Kemmey, Koll's training partner at Iowa State, "Sometimes I tell her I wish I had the heart that she has."

After the Stanford meet, Koll, Kemmey and Ihmels went to an In-N-Out Burger for dinner. Koll reveled just as much in Kemmey's new personal best as her own collegiate record in the 10,000m. "That speaks volumes about her character," says Ihmels.